blessingsflow

i often hear older road cyclists talk about how they used to ride fixed gears in the off season, and i was wondering what gear ratio they used to run. anyone have any insight?

divecon2k4

I would tink that they would pretty much run what would be best for them since there isn't a set standard.

daxr

My old Schwinn fixie (currently in pieces) ran 50x15 gears, as that's the rings I had from a compact crank on front, and the largest screw-on gear from the stock freehub on back. It was steeper than most, but ok for hammering out short flat runs.

48x16 is one more common combination, but if you have stuff laying around like I did there's nothing wrong with cobbling together something close to try.

ptle

You may want to ask the single speed/fixed gear forum. But gearing usually depends on the terrain. If your city is hilly use lower gearing, if its relatively flat use higher gearing.

91MF

the reason people use fixed gear bikes for training is to practice spinning. you can mash out on your road bike. so think about an average hill you regularly ride and imagine what gear you would be in to climb it seated. im just a recreational cyclist - no competition, and i ride a track bike on the street too[no brakes, oh no] and i can tell you velodrome assassin gearing is useless for training purposes. 46/16, 46/17 or 48/16 are pretty standard around here but if you have tree trunk legs maybe you can go big.

$0.02

botto 

or not.

tmh657

75 gear inches is what I like.

jfmckenna

I run a 46x18 flip 46x16 in the mountains I live in. Going down is far worse then going up. I don't buy the whole training for spinning thing but it is a very valuable tool for developing power and learning how to jump on the rollers.

Hida Yanra

I run 48x16 or 53x18...
Those were the bits I had so I rode them, but ideally I think I'd settle down right around 75 or 76 gear inches.

**brian**

I don't know if there was a standard gearing back in the day, but the point was to spin, to increase the "suppleness" of the legs - "suplesse" as they say in the old country. As 91MF said, mashing was not the point.

If you're thinking of setting up your own fixed-gear, consider how you'll be riding that bike, and test some gear setups on your road bike. If you want to develop power, gear for that. If you want to spin, gear appropriately.

In my case, I use my fixed-gear for recovery & noodle-around type rides, so my goal is to spin and keep my HR down, not to go fast. I take it up & down some short, steep climbs & lots of rollers - but no extended climbing. I'm in an urban area, so I slow down & speed up a lot.

I originally had it set up 39 x 15, which worked great for me. A few weeks ago I switched cranks, which put me at 41 x 15 - too tall for the kind of riding I want to do on that bike. I just put on a 17-tooth cog, gonna test that out on a recovery ride tomorrow.

The gear-inch chart tmh657 posted is a useful point of reference. Also check out Sheldon Brown's gearing calculator

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/gears/

It'll tell you how fast you'd have to go to spin a given cadence with any gear setup.

clausen

42 x 16. Easy spinning.

pdedes

42x16 for fixed gear cyclocross in winter